Drama, there is drama going on backstage at WWE.
You may remember that last week WWE released Mickie James, Samoa Joe, Billie Kay, Peyton
Royce, Bo Dallas, Wesley Blake, Chelsea Green, Tucker, Kalisto, and Mojo Rawley, wished them
all the best of luck in their future endeavors and gave them all the niceties a huge corporate
enterprise could.
Well not exactly, because one of the released stars, women’s division legend Mickie James,
tweeted to show how her belongings and effects were sent to her following her release.
Accompanying a picture of a bin bag marked Mickie she tweeted: “Dear @VinceMcMahon
Im not sure if you’re aware, I did receive my @WWE care package today.
Thank you.
#AlwaysBlessedandGrateful #WomensWrestlingMatters” Now WWE is associated with two sorts of trash.
If you were being exceptionally forgiving you might use mental to gymnastics to be like
‘oh maybe they ran out of nice bags to send stuff in’.
Oh wait no, because Maria Kanellis who was released back in 2020 tweeted to say that:
“last year I got one too”.
This seems to be the standard practice.
The tweet caused a bit of a storm and Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful, Dongus Lordus in Latin,
said that he spoke with numerous people backstage who seemed “truly disappointed and bothered”
by the situation.
Which spurred WWE into action as Triple H tweeted “Upon learning of the disrespectful
treatment some of our recently released talent received on behalf of the company, we took
immediate action.
The person responsible for this inconsiderate action has been fired and is no longer with
@WWE.”
Which is where this begins to bleed into our next story as WrestleVotes tweeted last night
that: “Some serious internal WWE house cleaning going down.
Many, many people impacted.
Wow.”
SRS tweeted to say that Joe Villa from the Public Relations department had been let go.
Fightful also reported that Dan Engler departed his role as Senior Manager of Talent Relations,
but will stay on as a referee.
Wrestling Observer reported that multiple names from the Talent Relations Team had been
given marching orders including director of talent relations Nicole Zeoli, senior manager
of talent relations John Cone who will remain working as a ref and senior director Mark
Carrano.
Carrano is the name many speculate could be responsible for trash-gate.
And anecdotally has a spotted history with released talent with the former Darren Young,
Fred Rosser retweeting Sean’s news on the release saying: “I was constantly harassed
by him about losing my job and I just stayed quiet”.
John Laurinitis is said to be taking on his duties which certainly puts Carrano squarely
in the crosshairs as the one responsible for the trash gaffe.
There’s been no official word on the backstage shake-up as of recording but some have speculated
that it could be a shuffle to make space for Nick Khan to insert his own people into prominent
roles.
Next, in news I never thought I would say: WWE has sold an anime series to Crunchyroll.
I’m going to let that sit for a moment… bananas.
In case you’re not a weeb Crunchyroll is the leading streaming service dedicated to
anime, the news of the sale broke during the first-quarter earnings call WWE held last
night, with President Nick Khan revealing the news.
He’s quoted as saying: “As we continued to expand WWE’s brand beyond the ring, we
remain focused on developing the slate of original programming from WWE Studios.
We sold a multi-episode anime series to Crunchyroll, which is now owned by Sony.”
So WWE joins the illustrious league of sports that have anime series about them, alongside
such greats as basketball, baseball, swim club, ping pong and all male cheerleading
squads.
Anime is brilliant.
Also coming out of the earnings call was a bunch of interesting news items.
First and foremost was yet further proof that Bad Bunny is massive star and people, us included,
had just never heard of him, because look at me, look at us, it’s like a game of spot
the difference where they forgot to put in the differences.
Anyway, during the call Stephanie McMahon said that their Hispanic viewership rose 31%
during Bad Bunny’s segments in the run up to WrestleMania.
Saying: “Notably, all Raw appearances featuring Bad Bunny showed an increase of 31% in the
Hispanic persons 18 to 34 and Bad Bunny’s total social Impressions during the time of
his storyline equaled nearly 700 million.”
Bunny is a draw and he can hit a Canadian Destroyer - I’m sure Jim Cornette is somewhere
frothing at the mouth about this.
Now it’s not for me to point out that maybe more hispanic people would watch WWE if they
felt represented by the product in any way shape or form and if hispanic stars were featured
prominently, were successful and maybe weren’t always the bad guy.
It’s not for me to point out.
But the 31 Bunny bump isn’t the only thing WWE lauded on the phone - fending off a question
about what WWE are doing on the storyline front to reinvigorate the fanbase, Nick Khan
said as covered by Sean Ross Sapp; “Their numbers are ‘robust’ and says
people are watching a lot of ways.
He says they know immediately from fans what is working and what isn’t, and it will impact
things.”
I don’t believe you.
Especially when there are no fans in attendance and WWE are telling people how to react on
the Thunderdome.
How can you possibly tell what people think in the moment?
And considering we’ve had stuff like Reginald rubbed in our faces for a good few months.
Come on Nick.
But it is interesting that people are watching a lot of ways: whether that’s live on TV,
on catch-up, the clips on YouTube, the sort of job of keeping up to date with WWE’s
storylines has spread to multiple platforms now.
Going back to that point on fans, with actual real life people having been on attendance
for WrestleMania this year it was quite a bleak contrast heading back to the Thunderdome
last week.
So many are asking when can we expect fans to be live in the audience for our wrestling
once more.
SRS, diligent tweeter of the call, said that “WWE does not predict a return to live events
until "the second half of 2021."”
As a few people have pointed out, considering it is the end of April, it’s not like the
second half of the year is that far away - so minimum we could be talking two months before
we begin to see fans again at WWE shows.
I think it’s fair to say that WWE has made some good innovations during the COVID era
of their programming - the Thunderdome being one of them.
Vince said on the earnings call that this parts of their strategy of turning the pandemic
to their advantage: “we then saw this as an opportunity to rethink
the way we do business and open what I call a WWE treasure chest.
The only way you can do that is to have the best management team in WWE history.
We have that team.
A team that’s innovative, a team that drives revenue and has reorganized our company in
a more efficient way to take advantage of new revenue streams, new online platforms,
new consumer products, new content creation, and new opportunities to expand our media
rights portfolio on a global basis.
I’m always excited about our business and I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited
than I am now.”
Mere hours later, a backstage shuffle.
Earlier this year, The Undertaker got into some hot water after he called the current
WWE locker room “soft”, and preferred his era when “men were men”.
Wrestlers’ Court.
That’s all that needs to be said really.
But as it turns out, Taker didn’t mean any of that, as he’s clarified in a new interview
with Sports Illustrated: “I wasn’t bashing our talent.
Our talent is extraordinary.
What they’re physically able to do, I couldn’t imagine doing that back in the day.
I have a lot of respect for our roster, but I came from a different time period.
My point was it was tough back then.
I remember when Triple H first came in, and he was shocked that I had black electrical
tape on my boots.
It was just a different time.
We didn’t even have trainers on the road.
If you had torn gear, you either wore it torn or you tried to fix it yourself.
I’m so proud to be part of the evolution of our business.
The industry has come so far.
It’s a sign of the success and how far we’ve come.”
Well this does sound rather more complimentary to the current day roster doesn’t it?
But with The Undertaker now retired, we won’t be seeing him at this year’s SummerSlam.
They’re saving that for the Saudi show.
But more plans have potentially been revealed for the Biggest Party Of The Summer.
A previous report from Sports Illustrated indicated that WWE are interested in having
fans back in attendance for SummerSlam, and a new report from Mike Johnson of PWInsider
has suggested that WWE could hold the event in Texas, much like they will be for WrestleMania
38 next year.
Phoenix, Arizona has also been considered.
Someone we definitely won’t be seeing at that show is Mojo Rawley, who was part of
the WWE batch releases last week.
However a report from Mike Johnson of PWInsider yesterday indicated that Rawley had actually
been let go in early March.
Now though, a report from Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select has confirmed this isn’t
the case and Rawley was in fact part of the releases last week.
Fightful Select had reached out to Rawley on the day of the release, and did again yesterday
to clarify his release date.
The PWInsider report seemingly took Rawley saying his next chapter would begin on May
31st and misinterpreted that this would be when his 90-day non-compete clause expired.
However this was not true.
Today is the day the next episode of my explained series goes live on partsFUNknown, this time
I’m looking into the origins of championships belts in wrestling, where they came from before
that and how they get made.
It goes live at 5pm UK time.
so depending on when you are watching this news you can either head over to PFK, subscribe
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I’ve been El Fakidor Laurie Blake, Jam That Jam.